Towards a transgressive hermeneutic of OMG THERE'S AN EAR IN HIS ARM

17 May 2007 — dan

Stelarc is everything the famous-in-certain-circles Kevin Warwick would be, if Kev had more guts and less self-promotion.

I base this evaluation on the fact that Stelarc does bowel-clenchingly freaky things to himself and says he's an artist, while Warwick does things any schmuck could do and calls himself a researcher.

An ear in an arm!

It's probably best that those of a delicate disposition not click the above, or look at this later picture either.

I think Stelarc's a bit like Survival Research Laboratories would be, if everything they made had to pass through their bodies somewhere.

Further evidence: Kevin Warwick has said wanky things about Stelarc, but I don't think Stelarc's said anything about Kevin.

(Via, via.)

Posted in Art, Nerdery, Strange Tales. 1 Comment »

Perfectly typical Wikipedia editor located!

7 May 2007 — dan

Mark Allyn.

I'm pleased to see see this degree of cheerfulness in a self-promoting Wiki-weirdo.

(I have edited a grand total of two links to my site into Wikipedia, in case you were wondering.)

It certainly beats (and I use the word advisedly) those dudes who devote most of their waking hours to finding Wikipedia articles in which a picture of their penis can defensibly be deployed.

As I write this, Monsieur Allyn has frickin' colonised the raincoat article.

Posted in Humour, Nerdery, Strange Tales. 8 Comments »

Just for the record

4 May 2007 — dan

Even if that fired comics guy had stood on a table in the middle of the office and hollered "I'm gonna come in tomorrow and shoot all yo' asses!", he would not have been making a "terroristic threat".

He would have been threatening to commit mass murder.

If the purpose of your murderous act is just to commit murder, not to scare anybody into doing anything (generally of a political nature), then it's... murder. Not terrorism.

Thank you.

Posted in Language, Strange Tales. 3 Comments »

Relive your car stereo installation nightmares

2 May 2007 — dan

I believe the winner of Jalopnik's Worst Car Hack competition has to be the fuel pump finger tapper.

There are, however, a number of other worthy entries.

Posted in Cars, Electricity, Hacks, Strange Tales. 3 Comments »

Dan's Unrequested Panorama Stitching Service

2 May 2007 — dan

I don't know about you, but the obvious question that popped into my mind when I discovered that there's "A 360 degree view in 71 photos of Will Self's writing room" on Self's site was "what'll happen if you feed those photos into panorama stitching software?"

Will Self's office

Ta-daaah.

(If clicking on the above image doesn't work because Coral isnt' answering hails, here's the direct link.)

Lots of the images don't actually match up, but Autostitch knows to discard the puzzle pieces that don't fit. The result also has quite a few dreamy spots in it, like any close-range indoor hand-held panorama. But, y'know, that's just a bit cubist, innit?

It's still not half bad, if you ask me.

Posted in Art, Nerdery, Photography, Strange Tales. 3 Comments »

A walk on the weird side

27 April 2007 — dan

I have a strange relationship with the folk at Life Technology.

They sell a lot of things.

Every single one of those things is outrageously, hilariously fraudulent.

Seriously. Go and have a look. It's great.

I have mentioned Life Technology from time to time on dansdata.com, and the Life Technology people, who do not think like you and me, have as a result alternated between asking to buy ads, being very cross with me, and sending me press releases.

Like this one, which turned up the other day (spelling original; a few strange high-ASCII characters redacted):

HI DAN, WE THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

THE TESLA SHIELD™ HYPERSPACE VERSION 1.0
The Tesla Purple Ennergy Shield™ Hyperspace Version 1.0 is the most powerful and advanced Tesla Shield that we have created so far and has taken many months in design and beta testing. The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ Hyperspace Version 1.0 incorporates all of the enhanced design and componentry characteristics of The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ Ultra Advanced Version 1.0, but more importantly The Tesla PPurple Energy Shield™ Hyperspace Version 1.0 integrates an internal radionics struuctural link to a RAD 5 Radionics Machine running at full power at the Life Technology™ laboratories 24/7/365.

The RAD 5 Radionics Machine is a state of the art remote influence / transformational radionics machine designed by the esteemed quantum physicist and radionics technology pioneer Karl Welz of Hyperspace Communications Technologies International (www.hscti.com). The RAD 5 is undoubtedly the most sophisticated and powerful radionics machine available today. The integral radionics structural link enables The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ Hyyperspace Version 1.0 to be permanently recharged by an unlimited source of subtle energy.

The upgraded internal componentry in synergy with the new integral structural link with the RAD 5 Radionics Machine enhances the subtle energy properties of The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ Hyperspace Version 1.00 by a factor of up to x100. Incredibly, Thats one hundred times more power than the original Tesla Shield™ ! Life Technology™ can confidently assert thathat The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ Hyperspace Version 1.0 is the most powerful and advannced personal transformational energy tool available anywhere today.

The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ Hyperspace Version 1.0 is priceed at $299.95.

Ordering :
All variants of The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ aare available through The Life Technology site at
http://www.lifetechnology.org/teslashield.htm

Whoo-ee. That ought to attract some really choice Google ads.

(But none for Life themselves - I've blocked their ads. There are plenty of other people happy to take your money to fool you into thinking their "radionic" devices do something useful, though, and I'm confident that some of them will be glad to advertise here.)

Life's products are modern updates of the potions and talismans I imagine travelling shamans selling to peasants in the Dark Ages. Some people are clearly happy to be counted as part of the filthy peasant demographic today, though, because stores like Life Technology's are quite numerous.

While Life's site is full of quantum this and electronic that (don't miss The Ultra Advanced Psychotronic Money Magnet™ EECS Version 1.0!), some of the promotional lingo hasn't changed for thousands of years.

Life Technology are, for instance, very much in favour of the modern "alchemy" movement, which has given rise to a marvellous substance called "White Powder Gold".

White Powder Gold resembles the actual conventional kind of gold in no way whatsoever, apparently because it is "monatomic", a quality not normally seen in solid substances. But have no fear, this monatomic gold is much better than regular old metallic gold. It's widely alleged to be very very good for whatever ails you.

Life's own version of the product comes with an entertainingly lengthy explanation of its origin and benefits, which I believe I can sum up as "it'll make you schizophrenic, but also immortal".

If you buy Life's monatomic gold in quantity it only costs about a third as much per gram as metallic gold (the Bush presidency has been good to the price of the kind of money that'll be useful after the collapse of civilisation...). Regrettably, however, the substance's stated "Philosopher's Stone" nature does not give it the ability to turn anything, including itself, into metallic gold.

(I note that the white-powder-gold enthusiasts have been repelled from the Wikipedia Philosopher's Stone article. Regrettably, the blinkered science-worshippers who rule Wikipedia with iron-fists-that-will-never-become-golden-fists have deleted the article that explained all about these Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements, on the entirely unfair grounds that it was utter claptrap. This made someone very cross. But the video will not be silenced!!1!!one!)

[UPDATE: A few months later, Life Technology got back to me!]

Posted in Scams, Science, Spam, Strange Tales. 6 Comments »

The 7/8-scale Chevrolet, and other stories

26 March 2007 — dan

On cheating in motorsport.

Water-filled tyres, five-gallon fuel lines, wafer-thin body panels, nitromethane boiling out of the engine oil and into the air intake, cars that can run just fine when their engine isn't meant to be able to get any air at all, and apparently pretty much everything Smokey Yunick ever did.

If you're not doing something that makes them change the rules next year, you'd better be doing something that at least forces them to clarify them. Angrily.

Posted in Cars, Humour, Scams, Strange Tales. 2 Comments »

Why is that ultracentrifuge walking down the hall?

17 March 2007 — dan

On ruining really expensive lab equipment, from organic chemist Derek Lowe's blog.

I find something very soothing in these sorts of tales of personal disaster. Chemistry ones tend to be juicier than information technology ones; the latter may involve halon dumps but seldom include any gaseous hydrogen chloride.

The chem stories, like metalworking stories, are also usually not so technical as to be incomprehensible to those of us whose chemistry expertise extends not much further than the ability to tell bromine from packaging peanuts.

Lowe's whole Org Chem Horror Stories category is here.

Posted in Humour, Science, Strange Tales. 5 Comments »
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